The distance between us
by Ryo-chanX2
Summary: The HiME carnival is over, the HiMEs lost their powers and normal life goes on, but not for Natsuki and Shizuru who are haunted by the incidents of the past. Shizuru's betrayal still lies between them and causes a distance they both try to overcome.
1. Prologue: Reminiscence

**Title:** _The distance between us_

**Author:** _Me. Ryo-chan or whatever you like me to call. Ha._

**_Series:_** _Mai HiME_

**_Pairing:_** _Shizuru x Natsuki_

_**Disclaimer:**__ Yes, unfortunately I do not own Mai HiME and its characters_

**_Warning:_** _This fanfic contains lesbian interaction._

_**Dedication:**__ This fanfic is dedicated to my dear friend JuuhachiGo and all ShizNat fan girls._

_**Description:**__ Just read the title. It speaks for itself. _

_ShizNat angst. Set after the events of the Mai HiME series._

_**Author's notes: **_

_Hi there! n.n_

_This is my first fanfic__ about Mai HiME/ShizNat._

_Correction of the numerous spelling and grammar mistakes I certainly made and feedback/constructive criticism are welcome._

_As you will see the story is from Natsuki's point of view and presents her thoughts, feelings and impressions. It turned out kind of depressing at the beginning, but I promise it will become more positive later on. _

_Fortunately, NSKruger did find some time to beta read it (yay, THANK YOU VERY MUCH:3); thanks to her you won't have to read a story massacred by my stupid grammar mistakes. _

_I hope you enjoy it!_

_**Prologue: Reminiscence**_

'_Why do we have to do this today? I mean, compared to "unhealthy" mayo ice cream, hot tea in this heat is lethal…Mataku…I should stop giving in every time_.'

The weather was hot and muggy back then. Litres of sweat, annoying waves of tiredness, laziness and bad mood provoking weather to be honest. Nevertheless, I found myself walking down a totally overcrowded street, fighting through a huge mass of people that were melting in the unbearable heat of the sun high above our heads. My head ached and pounded terribly, the loud street noises of grousing or laughing people in their either bad or incomprehensibly good mood didn't help this head ache to vanish either, so that I was forced to follow the slow crowd of shopping people for a long, long time like a sweating and very pissed off ice bear in the Sahara.

'_Beauty knows no pain. So doesn't her preference for tea. Insane woman…_'

Casting only one short glance at the blazing sun made me nearly blind for the next few minutes, and I almost ran into one of those freaky shopping idiots in front of me, when I suddenly felt delicate fingers wrap around my wrist, carefully but determined, and was pulled back just in time before I could crash into that stupid chit-chatting girl.

I sighed. Not because I was saved at the right time, not because I was prevented from getting into a nice morning fight with that tarted up bitch and from blowing off steam in my bad mood; no, it was because of the way I had been pulled back.

In former times, in our _happy _times, I would have felt two arms wrap around my waist, preventing me from running further and crashing into the person in front of me by pulling me into a tight embrace. And soon, I would have felt a hot breath of air tickle my right auricle and my ears would have caught a familiar melodic voice that would have whispered playfully with distinctive Kyoto-ben some indecent jokes to make me blush madly. And of course, being outraged, I would have yelled out her name and pretended to be angry at her, despite being in fact happy and feeling safe and content in her embrace.

It would have been…but it wasn't.

Our happy times were over. And there was no embrace I could flee to.

The only thing I felt was an aching coldness, a strange emptiness where once the short but warm and gentle touch of her smooth hand had been…and where it actually belonged.

"Natsuki should be more careful in this rushing crowd."

No hot breath tickled my ear, there were no indecent jokes my ears could hear, no playful giggling; just a friendly but distant comment on my clumsiness on this tiring hot day. I was disappointed.

Instead of seeking certain intimacy (touching and tickling and hugging me, even pecking my cheek and feeling the warmth of my body like she had done in the past whenever we had spent our free time together), she avoided intimate body contact and touched me only when it was necessary, like in this moment some seconds ago. I knew why and I hated it. I despised it.

I turned around to face the person to which this familiar voice belonged to and my weary eyes glanced at crimson ones, empty and glazed, but so deep and absorbing that I soon lost myself in them completely and forgot time and space, the street and the people around us.

Those were the only door to her well-hidden heart and her soul, and yet I wasn't able to understand what she thought or felt whenever I looked in those eyes. I had always been unable to read her mind, whether she masked it through faked smiles or not.

And this time wasn't different. Again she corked up her feelings.

Her full, sensual and strawberry red lips were curved into her standard smile she wore even when she was sleeping; her soft hands lay calmly one on top of the other and didn't sweat like mine did; and her chestnut hair shined in the sunlight like that of hair models in TV advertisements and was dry as if she had a ventilator integrated in her scalp, whereas mine was sweat soaked near the temples and neck.

She was perfect, unquestionably; just as perfect was her ability to hide her thoughts and emotions she didn't want to reveal or anybody to notice and to know.

Not even me…yeah, not even me.

"Ara, ara, is something wrong or why does Natsuki not move?", she asked me after a short time with that stupid standard smile across her beautiful face, while we were standing in the middle of that street in the middle of that crowd, looking at each other in a totally different way.

Her expression was the same as ever; it was this perfectly trained mask like that of a porcelain doll that kept on smiling and looking kind all the time.

Mine however was…empty.

Empty as my mind, empty as all of these useless thoughts buzzing in my head back and forth, but my heart was full of regret, full of suppressed anger and fear I wanted to cry out right in her obviously faked cheerful face that made me sick every time I saw it.

But somehow I couldn't. I just couldn't tell her what had upset me for weeks now and what hurt me every time we saw each other, because I didn't want the weight she kept on putting on her frail shoulders in self-punishment to be even heavier if she misunderstood me.

I didn't want her to suffer anymore for she had suffered enough because of me since we had known each other. I couldn't stand it anymore to see her in pain because of my naivety and ignorance and egoism.

I just wanted her to be happy.

And I wanted her to finally smile a _real_ smile, not that fake one she was showing me now.

But making her happy was only possible in one way: to love her in the same way she loved me.

And I didn't know if I would ever be able to do so.

And she didn't either. That was why she was so afraid of touching me and getting near me, because she was afraid of my reaction if she started to treat me as intimately as in former times; as in our happy times before the HiME carnival in which her obsessive and possessive, unrequited love for me had driven her mad, which had resulted in her betrayal and abuse of my trust…and…my body.

And when I had found out, when I had rejected her in my disgust and my fear, her mind had gone totally blank and her heart had been as empty and cold as mine after the death of my mother.

Only the desire to take revenge and to destroy whatever had stood between us had kept her alive.

By forgiving her I had saved her as she had saved me in the flower field when we had first met, but I hadn't been able to erase her fear of being rejected by me again.

This fear was a menace – a parasite that tortured and fed upon her that stood between us like an insuperable wall and made us both suffer under its hands.

Surely everyone would have slapped me in the face and told me to make the first step and to approach her or at least to assure her that I had no problem with her getting near me, but I...

I just couldn't.

I was insecure after what had happened between the two of us. I failed at figuring out my feelings for her. One day I had been sure that I loved her, the other day I had wished I would never see her face again.

"_Kanin na…kanin na, Natsuki. __I'm…_"

"_It's all right now, Shizuru…it's all right._"

Those words hadn't been a lie. There hadn't been moments when I had questioned them.

I had forgiven her for what she had done to me.

But I have never forgotten it.

That was why I couldn't make the first step. I had tried hard to rebuild our shattered relationship and to give our broken friendship a new chance by forgiving her because I loved her, maybe not the way she wished, but I really did. She was my most important person, I cared about her, I needed her, I truly loved her like I hadn't loved anybody like that before – and that is no foolish, cliché-ridden sentence taken out from a totally exaggerated love story, but the very truth. It is the truth. It really is…

However, the incidents during the HiME carnival had haunted me in my dreams, in my fantasy, since I couldn't remember what she had done to me, and had painted a picture of pure horror in my mind.

And that was even worse, because my fantasy punished me with terrifying nightmares that were obviously untrue but the more fearsome. They made her a monster I couldn't get near to, although I wanted to.

I felt like a schizophrenic.

"Natsuki? Are you alright?"

Her crimson eyes met mine, concerned and caring, and for a second I forgot the thoughts that had been haunting me until now and had worsened my already dreadful head ache; from the corner of my eye I saw her trembling hand moving instinctively towards my face, but again she pulled back and put her hand back onto the other where it had lain before.

I saw the pain flaring up in her eyes for just a second before she hid it behind emptiness.

"Natsuki is looking pale and tired. Shall we take a rest in the café over the way and cool down a little bit? I don't want you to be sun-struck."

She tilted her head to the side, the chestnut tresses of her silky hair were moving smoothly in this graceful movement and her lips curved into smile number 23, the 'everything will be fine if you do what I recommend'-smile I had already seen too often.

Yes, I knew every one of her smiles.

Our gazes locked like unbreakable chains, I nodded weakly in the end, whishing she would put her arm around my shoulders, pressing me as closely as possible to her, so that her warmth and her pleasant fragrance would calm me down, but she didn't; instead, her thin fingers made only short contact with my back and pushed me slightly towards the roadside before they let go of me after I had made the first step.

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"NO!!! SHIZURU!!!"

Desperately screaming, I shot up.

My mouth and my throat were dry like a desert and hurt terribly when I gulped. My head still ached as if I had bashed it against the next wall, and although my eyes were wide open in terror I couldn't see anything – everything was blurred and moving in a lifeless shade of grey.

It was dark. And it was cold.

My body was shaking and when I looked down at my freezing body, I noticed that I was wearing sweat soaked clothes that obviously didn't belong to me, but I couldn't figure out what exactly I was wearing just as I couldn't figure out where I was in the first place.

_'Am I in a hospital?'_

I was alone. No sign of Shizuru. Or else I would have heard her whispering my name.

"Shi…z…", I screeched weakly, but my voice failed immediately and couldn't create syllables more.

'_Shizuru…where are you? Where am I…? What happened…?'_

I tried to remember what had happened, how I had come here, anything, but the only thing I found was a big gap in my memory that had devoured everything that had happened between the moment I had picked up Shizuru at home for our tea shopping trip and now.

I felt lost and wanted to cry, but I couldn't.

The tears just didn't want to come as if the last drop of water in my body had been absorbed by my clothes.

Suddenly, I heard a door creaking and opening somewhere left from me and was blinded by dazzling light when I was turning my face in that direction to see who would come in.

"Natsuki!", a squealing voice called out in surprise and relief, "thank the gods, you have finally woken up."

At the beginning, I couldn't make out who it was because the voice and the person's shape were both blurred in my ears and my sight, but it had to be a girl coming near me because of the way she was moving.

She must had noticed that I was out of shape and in total confusion and desperation, because she sat down beside me on the bed and put both her hands carefully on my shoulders, squeezing them gently, and was probably looking at me worriedly.

"How do you feel?", she asked me after a few seconds in which I had looked at her as if I had been drunk, "you have been unconscious for almost two days now since the accident."

So I really had been taken to hospital…after an accident I couldn't even remember.

The girl bent a little bit forward to face me better in this barely illuminated room since she had forgotten to turn on the lights before rushing towards me, so that my nose was able to smell her striking flowery and fresh perfume that buried me in a cloud of penetrating smell.

I knew that perfume too well. It was Mai's and smelled hideous. I screwed my face up in disgust.

"Accident…?"

"You can't remember?!", Mai blurted out in shock and froze instantly after I hadn't reacted to her question.

"Mai…Wh-…where is…Shizuru?"

That was the only thing I cared about, the only thing I wanted to know.

But Mai hesitated conspicuously and remained suspiciously silent which made me worry.

"Is…is she alright? Was she involved…in the accident?"

My voice was still weak and was shaking with every word that I spoke. Mai remained silent.

"Where is she?!", I asked again, this time more desperately and frightened because of her silence.

'_Something is wrong, terribly wrong_._'_

She took a loud and deep breath and obviously wanted to say something, but she hesitated again as if she couldn't arrange the words she wanted to say, as if it was too hard to give me an answer.

I shivered in fear. Something terrible must had happened.

"Kaichou-san…she is…", Mai started in distress, still calling her 'kaichou' although Shizuru had already graduated and was now student at Fuuka University, "actually it was her who had an accident. She was hit by a car when the two of you were crossing a street."

Silence.

A moment of unbearable and crushing silence followed.

I stared at her with a blank, unemotional expression in my face and wasn't able to realize her words, to understand the information she had given me, to analyze and to grasp the emotional content in that fact.

My mind was turned off, yet I felt my heart pounding madly when I dug my fingers into my chest and scratched nervously at the fabric of my clothes with my nails over and over again, grasping for air.

I was frozen. I was numb. I felt empty. I felt as if I had been dead.

'_She had an accident…Shizuru had an accident…she was hit by a car…'_

Those sentences rushed through my head again and again, but I didn't want to believe what they told me, I didn't want them to be true; I just couldn't stand it. It was a lie. It had to be a lie. And I had to be dreaming.

"Natsuki, listen…", I heard Mai talking again, but her voice seemed to be far away and barely audible.

I broke out in a cold sweat, wrapped my arms around myself when my body started trembling and images of horror were spreading in my mind – Shizuru covered in blood, seriously injured…even dead.

I started to panic.

"How could this happen?", I whispered frantically, trying to remember what had happened, but again I lost myself in that gap of vanished memories where I could find nothing but sheer emptiness.

"Natsuki, listen to me…She was badly wounded, but she survived…Do you hear me? Kaichou-san is alive."

She squeezed my shoulders firmly, by that forced me to look her in the eye, and nodded encouragingly.

"She's alive", I repeated faintly, sending those words like an echo through my head over and over again to make sure I had understood them right, when I saw Mai's hand moving up to my face, brushing one lost tress of my hair behind my ear and heard her saying: "Shhh, calm down. Everything will be fine, okay?"

Only then I noticed it: I had started crying and tears were flowing down my face like they hadn't been for a long time since the HiME carnival and Shizuru's betrayal.

But those tears were different.

They were tears of relief and of joy.

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I put my trembling hand on the silver door handle and felt its burning coldness rush from the tips of my fingers through my naked arms, spreading all over my body and freezing the hot blood in my veins.

I was afraid of what was awaiting me behind that closed door, and had already been standing there in the middle of a sterile and cold corridor for more than five minutes. I couldn't force myself to open the door and to face Shizuru, lying in a bed, littered with bruises and bandages, and looking weak and helpless.

"_Fujino-san suffered serious brain injuries due to the impact on the windscreen, which fortunately acted as a buffer that saved her from being injured lethally. One of the police officers told me that she would have died if her head had struck the windscreen just a few centimeters lower at the spot were the windscreen and the car's bonnet come together. She had immense luck."_

Before coming here, Shizuru's treating physician – a rather old and grey haired but very sympathetic and sensitive man who reminded me somehow of a pug because of his wrinkled face – had talked to me about her condition and about the car accident itself. While coming here, I had thought about his words over and over again, had repeated his sentences about a hundred times to make them less shocking and less hurting, but still my lungs failed to breathe and I felt as if I had a lump in my throat.

"_Nevertheless, she suffered a basilar skull fracture and a second-degree skull-brain-trauma so that we had to put her in an artificial coma to give her brain the necessary rest to recover. In a coma, the human brain's activity is minimized considerably and is able to heal better, and first and foremost, faster. It will take one or two weeks before we can allow her to wake up, but the longer she remains in a coma the better." _

I leaned my forehead against the white door, sighed in depression and let go of the door handle that had become hot and wet under the firm grip of my white knuckled hand, when one of the nurses, who had observed me curiously for some minutes, came over to me with fast and small steps and asked me:

"Do you want to pay Fujino-san a visit?"

She had an awfully high-pitched voice that annoyed me, especially because she shrieked right into my ear.

"Yeah. Are there any problems with that?", I responded coldly and wanted to get rid of her as soon as possible, but the evil and direful glare I shot at her didn't seem to bother her at all; instead, she smiled or rather grinned at me kind of importunately, and her hazelnut brown eyes were sparkling brightly in joy.

'_What the heck is wrong with this chick? She's kinda…scary…'_

"I'm so happy that finally someone's here to see Fujino-san! It is so saddening to see someone being in a hospital without any friends or family members visiting them, since people recuperate so much better when there is someone who looks after them and gives them strength and love…And Fujino-san hasn't been visited since her admission to the hospital three days ago, you know."

I stared at her cheerful face and wondered why she cared so much.

I wondered even more why Mai hadn't looked after Shizuru at least one time since she had looked after me every day for one or two hours.

But I wondered the most why neither Shizuru's 'friends', also known as her stupid and irritating fan club of squealing fan girls at the university, nor her parents or other family members had visited her until now.

I had never met her parents before and she hadn't told me much about them, but I knew that their relationship was rather tensed and that they didn't see each other very often since her parents lived in Shizuru's hometown Kyoto and took care of the family's successful company.

But that was no excuse as to why they couldn't take care of their seriously injured daughter in the hospital.

"May I ask you a personal question?", she asked politely, again smiling that enormous smile that almost covered half of her round pumpkin head, and her obviously bleached teeth were so blinding that I wished I had sun glasses with me to protect my tired and sleepy eyes.

"Yeah…sure…", I mumbled irritated by her and hoped she would leave me alone if I answered her question.

"Are you a friend of hers?"

I was silent.

I didn't know what to answer. I really didn't.

In former times I would have answered: "Yes, I am."

Without hesitation, without any doubts, maybe even with slight pride in my voice because I had been the best friend of Fujino Shizuru, the Student Council's president and most beautiful and intelligent of all at Fuuka Gakuen.

I had been what others had dreamt of, especially those of Shizuru's official fan club, and secretly had enjoyed the jealous looks they had shot at me and had often been full of hatred at the same time, which had made it much more enjoyable, though.

After the HiME carnival, however, our close friendship had been shattered into uncountable pieces.

For her, I was the girl who had refused her love.

For me, she was a dear friend who had betrayed me.

'Is it possible to rebuild our friendship under these circumstances?', had been my question whenever Shizuru and I had spent time together, but I had never found an answer.

So I just kept on hoping it would be possible in the end.

I didn't want to lose Shizuru. Never.

"I…I don't know...I think I am…", I stuttered eventually and avoided looking her in the eye. From the corner of my eye I could see how she tilted her head to the side, how she stared at me quizzically and visibly confused, as if she waited for further explanation, and how she parted her lips to say something after I had remained silent for the next minute.

I couldn't stand any more questions. I couldn't stand her anymore.

"Uhm, sorry, gotta go."

I quickly pushed the door handle down, rushed into Shizuru's room without paying any attention to the puzzled nurse, and slammed the door behind me as fast as I could to finally escape that nuisance.

And suddenly, I was there. And suddenly, I had to face what I had tried to avoid so hesitantly.

"_Does she have to be operated on?" - "No. The brain injuries will heal by themselves and although both her legs have multiple bone fractures due to the massive impact, an operation is not necessary. We stabilized the broken bones and treated the minor bruises; the rest is up to Fujino-san herself."_


	2. Chapter 1: Awakening

_**Disclaimer:**__ Yes, unfortunately I still do not own Mai HiME and its characters. But I'm working on it._

_**Author's notes:**_

Hello, everybody!

Thank you very, very much for your comments!

Gee, I am so happy that you liked the prologue so much which encourages me to really continue the story (at first I had doubts because of the plot and the style of writing…and my bad English n.n°).

For all of those who feared that Shizuru might lose her memory: no, she won't.

I want them both to face their past and their problems and not only one of them, so don't worry about that.

Sorry that I kept you waiting so long, but I am very slow in writing…Please bear with me. n.n°

Again, all of my thanks go to my beta reader NSKruger for correcting all of these annoying grammar mistakes I made.

THANK YOU VERY, VERY MUCH!

So here's chapter one! I hope you enjoy it!

_**Chapter 1: Awakening**_

It had started to rain.

The rain had come suddenly and unexpectedly since the weather forecast had predicted the same unbearable heat and aridity like in the last two weeks, but miscalculations and unforeseeable incidents always do occur, especially when you don't expect them to happen.

Shizuru's accident had been no exception.

I was standing in front of the open window and was listening to the rain falling down from the skies high above me, when I reached out my hand to capture some of the thick raindrops that were drumming down on the windowsill outside the room. Soon I found my hand filled with warm water running down my naked forearm and tickling me, but I didn't care. Not at all.

My thoughts had kept me occupied enough for the time being.

My mind was full of thoughts, full of dreadful images as well as hopes, just as the sky was plastered with thick, grey clouds that had darkened the city and were releasing masses of water onto the thirsty grounds right in front of my eyes. It looked as if someone had dipped the city into a bucket of drab grey paint.

After holding my breath unconsciously for some seconds, I sighed deeply in resignation and stepped back from the window to close it as carefully as I could because I didn't want to wake Shizuru.

But that was impossible anyway. Shizuru was still in a coma.

Four days had passed since I had visited Shizuru for the first time; four days had passed in which I had spent nearly 24 hours a day at her bedside and had watched over her; four days had passed in which Shizuru had kept on fighting in her deep sleep.

And she still fought like a lion.

I drew the cream-coloured curtain, which felt as cheap as it looked like, and turned around to face the lonely bed in which Shizuru was sleeping her restful slumber and was hopefully dreaming peacefully. I went over to one of the wooden chairs that stood near the bedm, and sat down on the slightly scuffed, blue seat cushion without averting my gaze from her beautiful, motionless face that was now covered with scratches and plasters. Her head was bandaged around her forehead and had been changed this morning by pumpkin head nurse, who had annoyed me again with her unwanted chit-chat and her nerve-racking, personal questions, but since she took care of Shizuru in a rather protective way I tolerated her tiresome presence temporarily.

I was…grateful that she cared for Shizuru…although I would have never admitted that to her.

While looking at Shizuru in melancholy, while observing carefully every inch of her once perfectly shaped, but now bruised body, I felt as if I was one of her maniac fan girls, who would be even capable of camping near her grave day in, day out, but that somewhat absurd thought made me shiver instantly in discomfort.

I didn't want to think about Shizuru being dead.

Not when she was lying in a hospital. Not now, not ever.

I shook my head as if I wanted to get rid of this inadequate thought and tried to think about something else – something more positive, which had been a rare thing in the last days and weeks. The only positive thought that crept into my mind, however, was a pretty absurd one that certainly nobody would expect me to have.

I had to think about the fairy tale of the Sleeping Beauty who is captured in a centennial slumber and is waiting for her prince to come and rescue her from her deep sleep by a kiss of pure love.

And there she was, the Sleeping Beauty, right in front of me lying in bed, staying in a coma and waiting to be finally awakened.

And then there was me who could do nothing except being patient.

'_I wished I could do something to support you…Shizuru…I wished I could help you wake up.'_

And suddenly, I found myself staring at her sealed, dry lips, which were waiting to be kissed, while touching my own ones absent-mindedly with the tips of my trembling fingers.

I blushed at once when I realized what ridiculous idea had come to my mind.

'_Baka! What the hell are you thinking! As if a kiss could wake her up, you fool! Bwaaaah, why do you think about kissing her anyway?!'_

I buried my reddened tomato face in my hands and willed the burning heat on my cheeks to disappear right away, but the only thing that managed to vanish was my will to think positive and less negative.

I was so ashamed of these inappropriate thoughts in this situation, no, even in general, and wanted to slap my face as hard as I could to destroy whatever had driven me into the consideration of such a foolish idea.

But I didn't indulge this urge in the end after bringing myself back to my senses some minutes later.

However, I couldn't get that one last question out of my head.

The question why I had thought about kissing Shizuru in the first place.

"_Shizuru, you were the first one who came to me when I was unable to believe in anyone. But I can't have the feeling that you wish I did. Even then, I'm happy that you loved me."_

Back then, I had been the one who had placed her lips on Shizuru's and not vice versa.

Neither questions like 'Do I love her? Or do I hate her? Will I ever be able to forgive her?' had been of importance to me, nor had I purposely planned this kiss before our final encounter at Fuuka Gakuen.

I had acted by mere instinct and by what I had felt was the right decision to make in this certain moment.

I hadn't thought about anything else than pulling her out of this hole of unspeakable pain and destructive madness in which she had committed crimes of such cruelty a soul scarcely is capable to endure.

I had just wanted the old Shizuru back.

Shizuru who had been the first one at Fuuka Gakuen who had dared to speak to me. Shizuru who had bothered me in her calm and charming ways day in and day out to make me pay attention to her and to respect her. Shizuru who had managed to make me open up to her, who had managed to prompt feelings in me I had believed to be lost in my wrath and my craving for revenge. Shizuru who had even managed to make me love her as my best friend. And – how could I forget that? – Shizuru who had teased me whenever she had had the opportunity to.

Nothing else than bringing her back had mattered to me when I had kissed her.

And nothing else than bringing back Shizuru now would have mattered to me if I had kissed her.

But those had been only moments that had passed by. Afterwards, I had always asked myself why such moments would even occur in the first place, and those firstly irrelevant questions like 'Do I love her? Or do I hate her?' do become relevant later, because people always tend to make sense out of things they don't understand or can't explain.

I had always failed at figuring out my feelings. And I failed in that moment, too.

"Shizuru…how did you know that you loved me…? How can you be so sure that you love me?"

I looked at her inquiringly.

"How can I know if this kiss was either out of friendship or out love?"

I stared at her appealingly.

"How can I know if I truly love you?"

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Heavily armed with two huge bottles of specially flavoured mayonnaise in my hands, I left one of the hospital's main elevators on the ground floor and headed to the cafeteria to buy me some tasty snacks, because my empty stomach was growling like hell. I passed through a long and brightly illuminated side corridor, where a lot of patients were sitting in a row and were probably waiting to be called up, and tried hard to think about the tasty, mayonnaise flavoured food and not about Shizuru or about myself. People were staring oddly at me, or rather at the two mayonnaise bottles in my hands, and I heard their whisperings behind my back after I had passed by, but I didn't care.

'_It's your own fault if you can't appreciate mayo…you're missing something, really.'_

I turned right at the end of the hallway and left those idiots behind me without paying any attention to them, and found myself in a much calmer corridor that was more pleasing to the ear and that lead to the hospital's proper cafeteria, which was located at the end of it.

When I was walking determinedly towards the entrance of the little cafeteria, my eyes suddenly spotted someone very familiar sitting on the white tiled floor next to a potted plant and swallowing a huge sandwich in the middle of the hallway, right between me and my actual destination that was only a few metres away.

The redhead had never had polished manners, that was without question, but the way she pigged out on that poor sandwich was just brutish. It looked as if she hadn't eaten for weeks.

I thanked the gods that Shizuru didn't have to see this. She would have freaked out…at least inwardly.

The redhead hadn't caught sight of me yet because she was too preoccupied with eating, so that there were still two options left for me in that certain moment: the first one was turning on my heel and running away as quickly as possible, and the other one was risking to be seen by her and, by that, to deal with her, which I actually didn't want. She could be very bothersome sometimes…well, actually she always was.

Running away would have been the easier and more pleasant way, but on the other hand, this corridor was the only corridor that led to the cafeteria in which my food awaited me as well as it awaited a generous bath in tasty mayonnaise.

My stomach grumbled again.

'_Alright, alright…'_, I sighed heavily after taking a deep breath to calm myself, _'let's beard the lion in his den.'_

I squeezed my mayonnaise bottles nervously and continued my way to the cafeteria, silently hoping that the redhead wouldn't notice me while she was eating. But when I reached that spot, where she was sitting between that ugly potted plant and the furthest plastic seat of a whole row, and wanted to pass by as nonchalantly as I could, she let out a surprised "Huuuuhm!" and gulped audibly.

'_It was worth a try…'_

"Look who it is…our cool ice princess. What brings ya here?"

I was tired, I was hungry and I was depressed. I had no patience to endure her right now.

I sighed in resignation and turned around unwillingly to face her, but I didn't answer.

Like always, she wore this evil and at once amused grin on her face I disliked so much about her, and looked up at me with a provoking and venomous gaze, as if she concocted another plan to torment me again. She had cut her gaudy red hair a little bit shorter, which made her look more mischievous than she had already been , and wore the high school's uniform since she had become a first year high school student this school year.

Her new vocation as a nun hadn't lasted long, which hadn't been surprising at all.

Some of the white sandwich sauce had dripped all over her orange jacket, but she apparently didn't care and didn't think about taking that piece of clothing off to conceal that 'little' accident.

It was typical of her to be careless and indifferent towards most things, but it wasn't typical of her not to pay attention to her outer appearance. Maybe the only thing she considered herself satisfied with for now was the pleasant feeling of being full and content while other things didn't matter.

Sometimes we really were alike.

Soon her piercing green eyes found the way to the two mayonnaise bottles I was still squeezing in annoyance, and were lighting up in amusement while her compressed lips were curving into an even more evil grin.

"You really are sick, Kuga. Two whole bottles just for you alone? No wonder that this enormous spare tire appeared around your waist. How pathetic."

"SHUT UP, NAO!", I shouted, ear-piercingly loud, and blushed in embarrassment as well as in boiling rage, and felt the urge to smack her head against the next wall as she started laughing in a sick and wicked way and was staring amused at my waist to drive me up the wall.

And I was so stupid to fall for that.

"STOP IT! I'm not fat! Everything's as it's supposed to be…and mayonnaise doesn't make you fat at all…!!"

"Jeez, calm down, crybaby. "

Nao crumpled the white sandwich paper, threw it carelessly into the plant pot next to her and stood up swiping the dirt off of her brown skirt, before she picked up the black school bag that lied on the floor and started to rummage through it. After some seconds, she fished out a small bottle of mineral water and took a long swig from it before grinning at me again with that typical Nao grin of hers.

"Lemme guess: you were visiting your psycho girlfriend, am I right? I bet that your love handles don't bother her; she truly loves you after all, no matter what happens."

I frowned in anger. Nothing had changed.

Nao still enjoyed torturing me whenever she had the chance to, especially when it came to Shizuru. She knew all of my weak points and excessively took advantage of this knowledge to appease her thirst for making other people suffer, but I had stopped defending myself or even counterattacking, because I knew that Nao didn't do this merely out of spite or because she was a vicious person to the core – it was quite the opposite. She had lost everything, just as I had, and tried to keep others off from her with that kind of behaviour. She probably just didn't want to open up to and to trust others.

Nao reminded me of my younger self…who had been saved by Shizuru.

"Firstly: I am not fat. Secondly: she is not my girlfriend. Thirdly: stop calling her psycho, you psycho. And last but not least: Get lost. I'm sick and tired of you."

My stomach growled again, and the only thing I wanted now was something mayonnaise-flavoured to eat.

"Whoa, doggie's bitchy today. How scary."

"Nao…please, just stop it. Don't you have better things to do than annoying me? Like paying your mother a visit, for example?"

Our eyes met: mine in weariness because I just wanted to get rid of her, hers in apparent anger because she had found out that I knew that she went to the hospital every day after school to see her mother who lay in a coma just as Shizuru. I was pretty sure that in fact, Nao was a girl who cared much for those she loved, but she would have never admitted that to neither herself nor to others.

"Okay, okay, I'll go see my mother", she said with a smirk on her face, pretending not to be bothered by the fact that I was aware of her daily visits to the hospital, and went at a smooth pace in the direction opposite to the cafeteria, "Oh, and Kuga: say hello to your creepy girlfriend for me, will ya? Bye, bye!"

"She's…she's not my girlfriend…", I whispered feebly and watched Nao disappear around the corner.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Out of my way…!!! Everyone, get out of my way…!!!"

I was running.

Running madly through this endless seeming white corridor with its white, plain tiles disappearing under my moving, hurting feet; with its white painted walls right and left from me that seemed to be pressing together with every heavy step I made; with its white dressed physicians standing in the way and staring at me in anger and outrage, yelling something my deaf ears couldn't hear when I was passing them by in haste.

My lungs convulsed dolorously with every breath of air. Inhaling and exhaling had become painful, and the side stitches that kept stabbing my lungs seemed to spread all over my body, stitching every inch of it.

But I just couldn't stop. Not now. Not yet.

I barged my way through the crowd of patients, nurses and doctors, which stood right in front of the entrance to the intensive care unit, and dashed through the open door of the ICU, when I heard someone shouting furiously at me: "Hey, you! Running in our hospital is not allowed! Stop!", but I didn't listen to him.

I just couldn't wait anymore. I just had to run. I needed to run.

There it was. The door of Shizuru's sickroom just a few metres away from me in the middle of the corridor.

I slowed down, desperately gasping for air and absorbing urgently all the oxygen around me, when I finally reached my destination. I stopped right in front of the door and was suddenly overcome by the feeling of keeling over dead in the next seconds, so that I had to hold on to the wall next to me to pause a little.

"Are you alright?", I heard pumpkin head nurse asking in concern, somewhere near the small reception desk, and nodded slightly in response, "I'm glad that my message has reached you." She chuckled a little.

I was glad, too.

I had waited so long for this moment to finally come. I had waited one and a half week in fear and in worry.

But now the waiting had ended. The Sleeping Beauty had finally awakened.

"Thanks for calling me."

I turned around to face pumpkin head nurse, who was standing behind the reception desk and was smiling at me cheerfully, and smiled slightly back before grabbing the cold door handle and pushing the door open.

I couldn't wait anymore. I wanted to see her. Now.

I heard excited birds' twittering outside the slightly opened window across from me, and saw one of those tiny singing birds standing on the inner windowsill and futilely trying to crack a chestnut when I was entering the brightly enlightened room, still breathing heavily. At first, the wide door blocked my sight on the bed; but when I dared to step forward, out of the door's shadow right into the middle of the sickroom, and when I dared to glance at the bed to my right and to face Shizuru, nothing stood between her and me anymore.

No door and no sleep. There was just a short distance of two, three metres.

And there she was.

Barely sitting on the bed, completely snuggled up in a baby-blue blanket except for her delicate hands that were holding a small, white plastic cup filled with the steaming congou tea she loved so much, and looking extremely weak and tired. Her actually perfectly neat and shining hair was now dry and lacklustre and lay tousled on the huge, fluffy pillow that supported her head and back; her lips were colourless and as pale as her face and parted lightly when her endlessly abyssal, crimson eyes caught sight of me.

Our eyes met, desperately searching for each other.

Our gazes locked, entwined inextricably, and again I lost myself in those devouring red orbs, which drained me of every last bit of strength I had in my body, so hungrily, yearningly and obsessively like never before.

I was standing there, two metres away from her, and was clinging onto the icy door handle with numb and trembling hands, and was out of breath because my weak, crippled lungs didn't seem to work anymore.

I didn't know what to do.

I didn't know whether I should just stand there in silence or say something to her, but when I tried to speak, I felt my voice breaking even before I had the opportunity to form words with my tongue and my lips.

I didn't know whether my paralyzed body could find the strength to move and to find its way to Shizuru who was staring at me as if she was going to cry at any second now, but when I commanded my feet to make their first step, they didn't listen to me and remained where they stood.

I didn't know whether I would be able to touch her this time or to lock her in my arms as tightly as possible, but somehow my heart was at the edge of being torn apart when I only thought about that.

I wanted to scream.

I was weary of these thoughts that crept into my mind like a parasite, like a virus and pulled me back brutally every time I tried to take a step forward towards Shizuru.

And I felt tears filling my eyes, blurring my sight and slowly running down my cheek like a drop of pitch-black ink on a piece of white paper.

I cried, right before her eyes. And I hated myself for that.

"Natsuki…"

Her frail, shaking voice made my whole body shiver and shudder in pleasure.

But when I looked at her and saw how her fingers clasped tighter around the plastic cup, as if she needed to hold on to something, how her soft features tensed and nearly petrified, how her lips compressed firmly and how her eyes flickered up in pain again, my body froze and my blood felt as cold as ice, unable to flow through my body.

She had blamed herself for everything that had hurt me, even if it hadn't been her fault.

And now she blamed herself for the tears I was shedding in anger.

She obviously tried to avert her eyes from me, but she failed and kept staring at me with that longing and at once guilty look I couldn't stand any second longer.

It was enough. I couldn't bear it anymore.

My lamed muscles regained their strength and pushed my shaky legs forward in Shizuru's direction, past the wooden chair I had sit on the last days every time I had visited her, and I saw myself grabbing the tea cup and putting it on the metal tray next to the bed, as if by an invisible hand, much to Shizuru's confusion.

But before she could open her mouth and say something, before she could ask or protest, I sat down on the bed next to her and embraced her as gently as I could.

We were allowed to touch. We were allowed to hug. There was nothing wrong about it.

And my heart didn't tear apart in pain.

"I…I was so afraid of losing you…", I whispered right into her ear, sobbing and shaking, and wanted to squeeze her even tighter, but I didn't want to cause her already bruised body more pain, so I resisted in the end. Shizuru however didn't react; neither to our close body contact nor to the words I had spoken, and remained silent, overwhelmed, downright paralyzed by what I had forced upon her, by what she had avoided so desperately and by all means since the HiME carnival.

"It's alright, Shizuru…", I said to her like I had said back then when I had forgiven her, "it's alright."

"Natsuki…"

Her voice was faint and frail like it was some seconds ago, barely audible, but it was truly there.

How I had missed her voice! Especially that distinctive, melodic Kyoto-ben, singing my name in a way nobody else besides her could, emphasizing every syllable affectionately, which made my flesh creep in pleasure all over my body every time my ears heard it.

And suddenly, after some minutes in total silence, I felt Shizuru wrapping her previously lifeless arms around my waist (which was definitely free from love handles, Nao!), hesitantly and unconfidently, and her chin resting on my shoulder. Her hot and uneasy breath pulsated against my neck and burnt my cold skin, which sent a huge wave of shivers down my spine, and my heart started to pound madly against my chest when she dug her slim fingers into my back and clung desperately to me. She sobbed, but didn't cry.

I smiled.

This time I hadn't been pulled back when I had tried to make my way towards her.

This time I had reached her and she had come closer herself.

And the distance between us had become a little shorter.

"Welcome home…Shizuru…"


End file.
